A thinly sketched paranormal thriller starring Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan, The Apparition arrives in theaters stripped almost bare of anything that might provide some color, complication or personality. Even aiming for spookiness more than horror, writer-director Todd Lincoln’s feature debut is a desultory misfire. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 82 minutes)
Daily Archives: August 24, 2012
Downtown Express
An old-fashioned, squarely sentimental immigrants’ tale that marries a familiar story of generational rebellion to the New York hipster fusion music scene, director David Grubin’s Downtown Express is a wide-eyed if not particularly adroit charmer. If its awkward cycling through various stodgy subplots and general lack of a more starkly defined contrast and stakes mark it as somewhat lazy and functional on a narrative level, its relative freshness of setting — as well as the fact that its music, from Grammy nominee Philippe Quint and Nellie McKay, absolutely sings — makes the movie a marginal recommendation for those with an interest in musically-focused cinema. It doesn’t reach the heights of Once or even the more experimental, exuberant Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, but arthouse boomer fans in particular will respond positively to the movie’s heart and soul. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5, click here. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 90 minutes)
The Callers
Hey, ever wonder about rural Pennsylvania auctioneering? Well then the new-to-DVD documentary The Callers is the film for you!
In telling the story of a handful of small-business owner auctioneers — mostly specializing in farm, furniture, antique and estate sales — director Susan Sfarra gives her subjects wide berth, and there’s certainly an amiable charm to her movie. For anyone ever momentarily bewitched by the sing-song bid calls of a barker at a state fair or something of that nature, The Callers is kind of interesting… for about 15 or 20 minutes. Unfortunately, this is a feature-length nonfiction film, and Sfarra doesn’t quite have a firm enough handle on various throughlines to fully earn and pay off in earnest her 89-minute running time.
The film’s home video back cover copy purports to dig down into “our complex relationship with stuff — with consuming, collecting and hoarding,” but other than a few brief interstitial interview inclusions with regular attendees, The Callers is mostly just a genial snapshot of sellers. There are some amusing and engaging tidbits sprinkled throughout (one guy talks about being hooked by the occupation young, and tape-recording auctioneers like music fans used to do from FM radio stations; a couple talk about buyer tells), and a three-generation-deep collection of auctioneers puts an articulate face on the curious little business. But there’s only so much footage of sales that one can get into. While seeing the price for a giant throw-rug driven up to $5,600 is kind of intriguing on a surface level, absent a deeper examination of how rural auctioneering both fulfills a sincere need and probably drives some addictions, Sfarra’s movie is an incomplete nonfiction document.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle, The Callers comes to DVD divided into 10 chapters, under a static main menu screen. Bonus features consist of five bonus clips, a single-screen text bio of director Sfarra, a DVD-ROM element with two practice drills to hone your own auctioneer’s patter, and some additional information about distributor First Run Features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)